BASE-platform provides an innovative service for satellite derived bathymetric data for a broad range of users through a commercial service platform. Bathymetry is the measure of the water depth similar to underwater topography. BASE-platform has the ambition to establish a commercial service platform for bathymetric data, which is sharpened to user needs and provides most easy access. Its impact is expected to significantly influence the current market, its survey methodologies and the way bathymetric data can be accessed and used. Up-to date bathymetric data are essential for multiple purposes such as navigation, port and offshore construction, security, coastal zone management, fishery, cruising and tourism and required accordingly by various user groups. Conventional survey methods are either ship or airplane based and costly and time consuming. For these reasons, extended areas of shallow and deep water areas in Europe and worldwide are not mapped within an adequate accuracy or existing data are out of date. Earth Observation data, especially the Copernicus mission will play a key role to overcome this lack of data. BASE-platform focuses on Satellite Derived Bathymetry (SDB) as an innovative, rapid and cost effective approach to determine bathymetry from space. SDB in combination with hydrodynamic models to minimize tidal effects and crowd sourced bathymetric for validation purposes will provide those data. The BASE-platform service will be accessible through a commercial platform, which includes relevant components for a sustainable and client focused business. The services will be demonstrated, validated and improved in use cases. Relevant key players are involved for this purpose. The economic benefits of this new EO service will be analysed in a business analysis and model. Finally several dissemination actions will race awareness and increase the potential client group.

4S will address a current data and solution gaps from coastal and offshore stakeholders, which are the ability to generate and access spatial and recent information on seabed, such as benthic habitat, morphology, depth and change and trends. Digital information on these are crucial to respond to EC maritime directive, environmental impact studies and engineering offshore activities. We will address this gap by developing an online, cloud based software, named 4S – Satellite Seafloor Survey Suite – which empowers the users to benefit from satellite capabilities and specific aquatic EO algorithms. 4S Suite will have APIs allowing to integrate it into hydrographic software and user’s workflows, as will developed and demonstrated. 4S will harness Copernicus data together with US satellite lidar data and – optionally – integrate client airborne (drone) imagery and on-site data. The underlying algorithms, which will reach highest TRL level during the project duration, will address aspects of physical modelling, machine learning and sensor fusion procedures and will introduce breakthroughs of the current state of the art. Both, algorithm innovations and the webapp, will be jointly designed and evaluated with the users, of which some are part of the project team. Other stakeholders, many of which have signed supporting letters, will participate in 7 use cases which cover four countries, the Caribbean and several selected sites globally. With this intense evaluation and co-design we will achieve a reliable evaluation of the process and global outreach to the offshore and coastal stakeholders. The development of a sustainable business based on 4S will be driven by the industry partners, which contribute with 52% of the workload. Based on the existing solution gap we expect a continuous and strong increase in the user uptake and thus economic sustainability, which will lead to the growth of the European blue economy and, as social benefit, directly respond to the UNSDG 14.

Satellite remote sensing has been evolved into a powerful tool for global monitoring of surface waters. Earth Observations (EO) and remote sensing are widely used for quantifying the physical parameters of reservoirs as well as for retrieving selected water constituents concentrations. Space-O aims at the integration of state of the art (EO) and in situ monitoring with advanced hydrological, water quality models and ICT tools into a powerful decision support system (DSS) for generating real time, short to medium term forecasting water flows and quality data in reservoirs which will be used for the optimization of water treatment plants (WTPs) operations, establishing a complete service line from EO to water business sector. An operational service platform will be designed to facilitate increased interoperability among EO and modeled services. Data acquisition and integration of almost real time EO data in the hydrological and water quality models will be implemented in order to provide improved real-time, short to medium term water quantity and quality forecasting in reservoirs. A risk-based DSS will be developed in order to enable cost-effective and environmental sustainable Water Treatment Plants (WTPs) operation, based on the water quality parameters forecasts at the reservoir, the in situ monitoring data and the data collected through supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems used in WTPs for operation control. Additionally, developing Copernicus Services (C3S) will be jointly assessed with site-specific data sets generated through the satellite, modeling, in situ and citizens monitoring services, to produce continuous monitored indicators for enabling water quality Risk Assessment analysis on a catchment level.